Authors

Files

Document Type

Poster

Description

Mining activity in Butte, Montana has taken place, or continues to take place, within the urban residence of Butte itself. This has led to urban areas with high concentrations of toxic metals such as arsenic, lead, copper, zinc, mercury and cadmium. Advances in protein study and gene sequencing has opened the possibility of finding molecular biomarkers whose presence, absence or morphological changes could indicate disease processes in populations exposed to environmental toxins. While in principle, biomarkers can be any chemicals or metabolites, as well as proteins and genes that are indicative of exposure to xenobiotics, this study seeks to identify changes in cellular pathways that suggest chronic (or acute) exposure to low-levels of metals associated with historical mining activities on the Butte Hill that could cause oxidative stress or other stress to the cell.

Publication Date

8-7-2013

Keywords

Disciplines

Biochemistry

Comments

This project was funded by the Undergraduate Research Program (URP) at Montana Tech and the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program at Columbia University and awarded to Michael Calhoun, and the IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) Grant Program at the National Institutes of Health awarded to Dr. Katie Hailer.